Rome day 2

Tivoli and Hadrian’s Villa 1/2

Picture: Paolo Bellini

The below story is mostly based on: Henri Stierlin, Imperium Romanum part I of the Etruscans to the fall of the empire, Taschen, Cologne 1996. We take the subway and head for the Pyramid of Cestius. The bus is waiting. We get out at the villa of Hadrian to look at the complex.

A fair portion still hasn’t been excavated. Villa Hadrian, like all villas that were built by the Romans, were accessible by horse within one day at about 30 kilometres from Rome. The landscape that was selected by the emperor was at the foot of the hills at Tibur (Tivoli). This forest landscape with small rivers and meadows was owned by Sabina, Hadrianus’ wife.

The palace construction began in 118. The entire complex lacks a clear axis along which the different buildings are arranged, nor has it a central point. It is more akin to an organic whole that mother nature created spontaneously. The Villa of Hadrian consists of caves, ponds, fountains, waterfalls and lakes in between which different buildings are located. These buildings include palaces, libraries, stadiums, temples, bathhouses, sancturaries, an academica, the Teatro Marittimo and the Piazza d’Oro. Beneath the surface exists an entire network of service corridors. These were used by service personnel and carriages to transport goods. 4/5th of the entire complex is still at a subsurface level.

The role and the meaning of the buildings are not entirely without controversy. According to the classical author Spartianus, the whole complex is a kind of travel report by Hadrian. Many buildings were named after famous buildings like the school of Aristotle, the academy, or the Poikile, the stoa in Athens. Still, the buildings you find here are not copies of the Greek. On the contrary, they are the personal and original designs by Hadrian himself.

It is likely that the different buildings involve the religious roles assumed by the emperor, including all kinds of rituals. For example, the emperor was worshipped as a companion to the gods in the naos, or he compared himself as rule of the cosmos with Jupiter and Helios. The emperor had various nicknames, Aulette (a flute player of Apollo) or Kallinikos (as Heracles). The different buildings served as a place to worship a certain cult. There was also a corridor system beneath the Villa of Hadrian that was used by service personnel.

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We follow the signs that list the various constructions. After looking at the scale model, we arrive in the ‘Poikile’. If you walk underneath the gate, you can still see the pond in the middle.

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This is also the first building the visitors from Rome would see when arriving at the villa. The complex was more than 200 metres long and a hundred metres wide. It was surrounded by a double colonnade. The 10-metre high wall at the centre of the double colonnade can still be seen today.

The name, Poikile, is derived from this colossal wall. The building was named after the famous painted column walkway: the Stoa in Athens. Still, this complex was some seven times bigger than its Athenian counterpart. The covered walkways provided enough shade for the visitor. Gardens were in between the pond and the columns. On the east side, we can see the remnants of a building with three exedras. A part of Poikile is supported by a four-story substructure that is clearly positioned lower.

Model of Hadrian’s Villa showingthe Small Baths (left)
the Vestibulum (center)
the Great Baths (right)

Photo: Carole Raddato

We continue south towards the Canopus area. As soon as we head this way, we will first see the remnants of some smaller and larger thermae. The small thermae have an octagonal hall with straight and convex walls.

This part was likely once an apodyterium, in other words, a dressing room. It is plausible that these baths were used expressly by women. If we continue walking we will see the large thermae not far from the small baths.

These were for the men. The large central round hall was probably a sudatio (sauna). We can deduce this from the lack of water pipes. In addition, we can find in succession: the tepidarium (tepid), the caldarium (hot) and a space with three baths. In the middle we find the frigidarium (cold) bath. Both thermae types were used by the service personnel.

If we continue southwards we arrive at the pond after which this part of the Villa Hadrianus was named: the Canopus. The first one you see is a pond of 119 x 18 metres that ends at the Serapis sanctuary. The Canopus was dug out in a small and low-altitude valley.

This pond was named after and based on a canal in Alexandria: the Euripos. This canal led to an anabranch of the Nile that hosted the sanctuary devoted to Serapis. And indeed, this sanctuary in Alexandria was also designed by Hadrianus. A part of the portico is still intact. The architrave alternates between round arches and some statues remain between the columns. As virtually always, these are copies of Greek originals.

The Romans were capable of producing large-scale accurate marble copies of the predominantly bronze Greek statues. They developed a clever method to do this, but more on that later. When you stand in front of the three sculptures of Mars, Mercury and Minerva, you see a number of caryatids on the right. These sculptures originally supported a pergola. These sculptures are also accurate copies of the Erectheion-caryatids in Athens, commissioned by Hadrianus. The sculptures we see now are copies made of cement. The sculptures that Hadrianus commissioned copies of can now be found in a museum. In addition, there were also sculptures of the Nile, the Tiber and a crocodile.